CAREER: Distributed estimation and control for energy efficient buildings

智能优点：拟议研究的目标是通过实时估计和控制大型建筑的采暖、通风和空调(HVAC)系统来显著提高其能效。拟议研究的关键智力优点在于提出了暖通空调能量优化问题的新公式，该问题依赖于通过估计(热负荷和占有率)来减少不确定性，从而使控制设计问题易于处理。过去和现在对暖通空调系统能量优化控制的研究都假定热负荷和占有率是已知的。这一假设限制了它们在实践中的适用性。技术研究计划利用了来自不同领域的几个组成部分？图形模型、迭代方法、分布式MPC框架？制定一个显示有希望的初步成果的综合框架。除了设计估计和控制算法外，还计划研究建立与算法无关的性能极限，这将增加我们对分布式估计和控制中的基本极限的理解。最后，计划在真实建筑中进行广泛的实验验证，以验证方法的实际适用性。广泛的影响：成功完成拟议的研究将导致美国二氧化碳排放量的大幅减少，并改善国家？S能源安全。这项研究将通过与建筑能源业务的关键参与者联合技术公司(United Technologies)计划的产业合作和技术演示，影响美国的建筑能源业务部门。针对社区大学生的教育部分有可能直接为美国的S劳动力提供与就业相关的培训，特别是那些没有四年制大学学位的人。研究课题的及时性将有助于使本科生更多地参与工程研究。此外，技术研究将影响广泛的应用，涉及利用空间分布的传感器和执行器估计和控制具有复杂动力学的时空过程。电网的运行，空中、公路和通信网络中的交通的监测和控制，都是这项研究可能有用的几个例子。

Intellectual Merit: The goal of the proposed research is to achieve significant improvement in energy efficiency of large buildings by real-time estimation and control of their the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems The key intellectual merit of the proposed research lies in the novel formulation of the HVAC energy optimization problem, which relies on uncertainty reduction through estimation (of thermal loads and occupancies) to make the control design problem tractable. Past and current research in energy optimal control of HVAC systems has assumed that the thermal loads and occupancies are known. This assumption has limited their applicability in practice. The technical research plan utilizes several components from diverse areas ? graphical models, iterative methods, distributed MPC framework ? to produce an integrated framework that shows promising preliminary results. In addition to design of estimation and control algorithms, research is planned on establishing algorithm-independent performance limits, which will increase our understanding of fundamental limits in distributed estimation and control. Finally, extensive experimental validation in real buildings is planned to demonstrate the practical applicability of the methods.Broader Impact: Successful completion of the proposed research will lead to a substantial reduction in CO2 emissions in the United States, and improvement in the nation?s energy security. The research will impact the building-energy business sector in the U.S. via the industrial collaboration and technology demonstration that are planned with United Technologies, a key player in building-energy business. The educational component that targets community college students has the potential to directly provide employment-relevant training to America?s workforce, especially those without four-year college degrees. The timeliness of the research topic will help bring about greater engagement of undergraduate students in engineering research. Furthermore, the technical research will impact a broad spectrum of applications that involve estimation and control of spatio-temporal processes with complex dynamics with spatially distributed sensors and actuators. Operation of the electric power grid, monitoring and control of traffic in air, highways, and communication networks are a few examples where this research can be useful.